President Barack Obama on Tuesday â€“ a day ahead of the one-year Haiti earthquake anniversary â€“ released a statement urging the “international community to ‘fulfill its pledges’ to aid ongoing earthquake recovery efforts,” The Hill’s “Blog Briefing Room” reports (Fabian, 1/11).

‘Ethical Issues Raised By PrEP Are Difficult, But Not Insurmountable': “The AIDS movement is at a pivotal point in history, where it will face scrutiny not only to demonstrate that interventions are cost-effective and equitably distributed, but also to balance resource demands with other global health imperatives, such as maternal/child…

U.N. Issues $51M For Sri Lankans Affected By Floods; Sri Lankan Government Says Agricultural, Nutrition, Sanitation Among Needs Priority Needs For Country The U.N. on Wednesday issued an appeal of $51 million “to meet the urgent needs of more than one million people affected by recent monsoon floods in Sri…

Afghan Government Begins Taxing U.S. Contractors The Washington Post reports on Afghanistan’s efforts “to tax U.S. contractors operating there.”Â Though itÂ “could raise millions for the cash-strapped government,” U.S. and Afghan officials sayÂ the taxÂ “could also provoke fresh confrontation with the United States,” the newspaper writes. “Taxation of U.S. government assistance is barred…

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, “in a speech on Wednesday, outlined steps USAID is taking to improve its balance sheet, including moving costly senior jobs from places such as Paris and Tokyo, reducing its real estate portfolio and doing more work with in-house experts rather than expensive contractors,” Reuters reports (Quinn, 1/19).

“A massive U.S. aid program that has made Pakistan the world’s second-largest recipient of American economic and development assistance is facing serious challenges, people involved in the effort say,” the Wall Street Journal reports in an article detailing the difficulties.

In an interview with Foreign Policy’s blog “The Cable,” USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah said a Republican Study Committee (RSC) proposal to trim the U.S. foreign aid budget, in addition to other non-defense programs, could weaken U.S. national security. “‘That first and foremost puts our national security in real jeopardy because we are working hand and glove with our military to keep us safe,’ said Shah, referring to USAID missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and Central America, and responding directly to congressional calls for cuts in foreign aid and development,” the blog reports.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a “$21.7 billion health fund championed by the rich and famous has come under harsh scrutiny amid revelations it’s bleeding money to corruption,” the Associated Press reports. The piece examines the organization’s response to an article published by the AP on Sunday that highlighted the findings of an internal investigation led by “Robert Appleton, a veteran former U.S. federal prosecutor whom [the fund’s inspector general John] Parsons hired last fall to root out corruption,” the AP writes (Heilprin, 1/24).

Insecticides To Fight Malaria: In a Daily Caller opinion piece, Richard Tren of Africa Fighting Malaria andÂ Donald Roberts of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences write in support of using insecticides, like DDT, to combat malaria: “Unless the donor nations that fund global malaria programs, such as the…

Foreign Policy’s blog “The Cable” reports on Thursday’s call by a group of “conservative House Republicans … for a drastic defunding of the U.S. Agency for International Development and a host of other programs” (Rogin, 1/20).